Games that hurt us.

Well, hurt our emotions anyway. So I've been thinking about the reward-punishment mechanic of video games, mainly because I was reading another Vs. mode from N'Gai and Stephen Totilo. By the way if you haven't read any of those, stop reading this and go do it, they have far more to say than do I about games. It's a very complex system which has grown in many ways since the days of punishing arcade games that were trying to suck another quarter out of your pockets. Xbox live has certainly created a new class of gamer, the achievement whore, that previously didn't have the same forum for gloating as they now do. So even punishing Xbox games have some level of reward built in. However, what do games do nowadays to the player in response to their abilities? Is it better to have a punishing game mechanic or mechanic that rewards players for good play? Maybe it is best to have a little bit of both the carrot and the stick.

This was mostly sparked by the card game scum, also known by less savory names. The game actively employs both a punishment and a reward mechanic. The worse a player does, the more likely things will go poorly for them and vice-versa. The idea seems to be that as a player does worse they will have more motivation to win in order to be the one with all the benefits. In a somewhat real-life scenario, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. My first experience with the game left me with a sour taste in my mouth, undoubtedly due to my position at the bottom of the food chain for the end half of the game. I did however question the value of punishing a player for playing poorly, especially in a game with other players. When you examine the punishing nature of multiplayer games at the morning, you see a multitude of games with tight-knit communities of dedicated players that are not accessible to new players. This seems to be especially true of FPS's and RTS's where learning the game requires time, time that isn't available when playing experts. Now, these games don't have a punishment system built in to them per se, although the purchasing power of a game like Shadowrun or counterstrike could be seen as something of a reward for the good, while punishing the loser. So maybe examining multiplayer games is the wrong way to look at this issue.

So then, we are left with single player games. The most trenchant example of not punishing a player for their lack of skill is the dynamic difficulty of the Naughty Dog games, which become easier if you die repeatedly and more difficult if you breeze through a section. I think it's a brilliant decision on their part, something that sits under the hood of the game and rewards the player for skill by presenting a greater challenge, but also helps a player if they are having trouble. During the 3rd round of the most recent Vs. Mode. Stephen said the following

"Let's radicalize morality systems by turning them into something else: difficulty settings. Want to take the scumbag, Sister-killing approach to get through a game? Well, guess what, buddy? It's going to be harder to win the game. You're going to be given access to fewer tools and abilities. Or...shocker...maybe taking the right path would make the game harder."

In this case the punishment isn't tied in to any lack or display of skill on the player's part, which leads me to agree with Stephen. The idea of punishing a player seems so inextricably tied into the arcade mentality, where every player death represented another potential quarter that to continue to have punishing mechanics that disadvantage the unskilled seems antiquated at best, and decidedly unfun. I'm one who gets easily frustrated at a game that seems to be piling on the hate and the possibility of magically climbing out of the pit I'm in doesn't excite me. Rather I think the concept of giving to a player when they fail in order to help them through the game is much more important. After all, don't we want a player to complete a game no matter their skill level? I did some work on a game during which the difficulty became drastically toned down to cater to the common player, something that I agree is good from a business sense, but that still could be supplemented by containing a greater challenge for the more accomplished player.

This is one of the biggest things that worries me with the Wii. I think Nintendo is missing out by essentially avoiding the hardcore. Yes, catering to the casual gamer is helping their bottom line, but they could have both if they were able to provide that game that was simple enough for the casual gamer, yet could be made a greater challenge for the experienced gamer. Wii sports boxing frustrates me to no end, because the line between new player and experienced player has been blurred to the point of almost not existing. I can flail around and win just as often as when I try to do specific things. There must be a better way to meld the two. Hope to see it soon.